How to Help with Stress and Anxiety

How to Help with Stress and Anxiety in Islam

In this article, several ways of how to deal with stress and anxiety, in other words how to reduce anxiety and stress, will be discussed. It is a vast subject area, and along with some of the psychological advice that is commonly heard in this context, this article is principally going to elaborate on what Islam recommends to us regarding how to manage stress in life.

The positive aspects of stress and their physiological root will be mentioned, as will the more extreme negative aspects of stress, which are referred to as distress. Again, that has a physiological root, as well as a physiological manifestation.

There will be a summary of some practical recommendations to follow, that will hopefully provide some new ways of how to manage stress and anxiety.

Positive stress

Beneficial stress is also referred to as “Eustress”, which means that one has a positive response to various stress factors. In the workplace, for example, Eustress is defined as a positive stress that can help employees to work more effectively, and at the same time to increase their job satisfaction. Studies go as far as to say that “not enough eustress leads to employee boredom and turnover.”¹ It is commonly understood that a certain amount of stress is required for us to be active and to grow as individuals.

Distress

A large amount of negative stress, or distress, can lead to physical and psychological illness. Other words that are used to describe this situation are strain, conflict, burnout, depression, and pressure. This kind of stress is described as a response model, the definition of stress as understood in this way being “the non-specific response of the body to any demand placed upon it.” The stress response has three stages, namely the alarm phase, the resistance phase, and lastly, exhaustion.

Some of the symptoms of this kind of stress are irritability because of poor sleep, lack of concentration, fears and anxiety, physical illnesses, impaired immunity, social isolation. These responses to the “bad” stress give good reason for addressing how to help with stress.

Stress as reported by the public

The American Psychological Association has reported that among American college students seeking counselling, 61 % state they suffer from anxiety, and 45 % report that they feel stressed.² The Health and Safety Executive of the UK has reported that in 2019, stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 55 % of all working days lost due to work-related ill health.³  

Stress management in Islam

In the narrations handed down to the Muslim community from their Holy Prophet, it is reported that he said, “there is no might and no power except in God” as a remedy for ninety-nine different diseases, one of them being anxiety.

Islam also has quite a different way of looking at anxiety; anxiety and stress are also seen as tests that are sent by God in order to encourage certain behaviours in human beings, possibly to make them more resilient, and to be able to reward them for any patience shown in the face of these tests, challenges, and stressful events. It is narrated that God will in fact pardon the sins of a person who has to undergo anxiety and demonstrates patience in the face of it.  

Through Islam human beings derive four significant means for how to deal with stress and anxiety; these are of course basic principles of the Islamic belief system, such as faith in God, faith in the hereafter, righteous deeds and forgiveness.

To try to explain in brief the benefits derived from each of these factors, one would say that faith in God in itself provides the human being with an inner peace that will go some way towards preventing excessive responses to the stresses of life. Faith in the hereafter provides the believer with an outlook of hope, that no matter how difficult the challenges in this life, there is the promise of the eternal life. Righteous deeds are demanded from the believer, and the act of performing such a deed in itself will provide the person doing it with some peace of mind, as well as there being the possibility of some easing of challenges or reward in this life or the hereafter. Forgiveness itself also brings the person doing the forgiving some peace of mind, and Muslims are taught that God looks upon forgiveness very favourably.

A list of stress management techniques from the Quran and Islamic traditions may include the following; belief in the wisdom of Allah, having stability with insight, patience, praying, repentance, forgiveness, reading Quran, being obedient to the commands of Allah. Furthermore, fear of Allah, humility before Allah, having hope, giving charity, although this list is still not comprehensive.

Practical advice

One relevant piece of advice for Muslims and non-Muslims alike that is also easy to execute, is a “spiritual intervention” such as religious thoughts, prayers and meditation. Studies have shown that there is healing power in such interventions. They have been shown to lead to slow breathing, slow heart rates, low blood lactate levels, and an increase in alpha brainwaves, all of which are signs of relaxation.⁴

There are also various duas (Act of supplication) for stress and depression in Islam, which can be easily searched for online. As well as this, some of the surahs (verses) in the Quran are commonly suggested as suitable surahs for stress and anxiety. For example, a clinical study in a randomized controlled trial found that playing Surah Al-Rahman from the Quran to  a treatment group of women suffering from depression over a 4 week period, for 22 minutes, twice a day, resulted in a significantly greater decrease in the levels of depression than in the control group, which was exposed to relaxation music for the equivalent amount of time. ⁵

Concluding remarks

This article has hopefully elucidated a little more what stress actually is, and what advice can be given for how to reduce the stress, in the cases in which stress is too large, and has no benefits for us. Many of the suggestions from Islam are available to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and even listening to verses from the Quran is something that non-Muslims, and equally anyone unable to read the language of the Quran in Arabic, may well appreciate.

Two recommendations in particular from Islam would be worth giving more thought; the word “patience” was mentioned, also in the context of realising that as human beings we simply cannot control all eventualities in our life. As Muslims we are advised to be patient, to trust God, or Allah, and we could even paraphrase this in colloquial language that is commonly understood, that we should learn to “let things go”.

The other significant recommendation from Islam is prayer; quite apart from it being obligatory for all Muslims to pray the five prescribed prayers every day, prayer in itself has virtues and benefits for the life of Muslims, and so there are numerous verses describing prayer.

O you who have faith!

Take recourse in patience and prayer;

Indeed Allah is with the patient.

 (Quran, Chapter Al- Baqarah; 2:153)

For non-Muslims this might take the form of meditation and breathing exercises. Hopefully there has been much in this article to benefit those who are seeking advice on how to not stress out.

References

• Krit Jarinto, Eustress: A Key to Improving Job Satisfaction and Health Among Thai Managers Comparing US, Japanese, and Thai Companies Using SEM Analysis (December 29, 2010)

• Anjali Rana, Dr Renu Gulati, Dr Veenu Wadhwa; Stress among students: An emerging issue, Integrated Journal of Social Sciences, 2019, 6(2), 44-48 2 American Psychological Association, Monitor on Psychology, 2017/09. By the numbers: Stress on campus
• 3 Work-related stress, anxiety or depression statistics in Great Britain, 2020, HSE

• Yousef Aazami, Esfandiar Azad Marzabadi, Stress Management Model Pattern According to Quran and Hadith, International Journal of Behavioral Science 2017; 10 (4), pp. 167-175

• Rafique R, Anjum A, Raheem SS. Efficacy of Surah Al-Rehman in Managing Depression in Muslim Women. J Relig Health. 2019, Apr; 58 (2): 516-526